


portrait of a girl

by silpium



Category: bare: A Pop Opera - Hartmere/Intrabartolo
Genre: Character Study, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, content warnings in opening notes!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 04:12:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17317877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silpium/pseuds/silpium
Summary: Sometimes, Ivy wants to drop the act she puts up, just to see what happens. She lets a little bit of her self filter through the walls she puts up, just enough that she’s still safe and secure in her persona.She always finds that for every step she takes forward, she takes two back. (Pain is a funny thing, Ivy thinks, as Nadia brazenly comments thatbathroom stalls don’t lie: sometimes the things that she cares about most hurt her the most.)Or: the story of Ivy's life throughout the years, from childhood to after St. Cecilia's and everything in-between.





	portrait of a girl

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings:
> 
>   * bullying 
>   * child neglect 
>   * depictions of depression 
>   * hypersexuality/referenced underage sexual content 
>   * internalized homophobia/compulsory heterosexuality 
>   * (internalized) misogyny and slut-shaming (canon-typical) 
>   * other child abuse: referenced, type unspecified. i personally imagine it as sexual and emotional but there is no hard indication thereof. 
>   * referenced (canonical) suicide 
>   * underage drinking/referenced underage drug usage 
>   * unhealthy coping mechanisms
> 

> 
> hoooo boy. here it is: a monster! this is a character study starting from ivy's childhood all the way through and past canon that i’ve been working on this for a few months, now, and i’m super excited to share this with you all, because ivy’s honestly such a wonderful character and i wish her intricacy was more appreciated… i love her so much! 
> 
> thank you for opening this up! i hope you enjoy reading!! :-)

The earliest memory Ivy has of her father is worn and torn at the edges, faded like a treasured photograph, tenderly-kept, held and examined again and again.

It is not a kind memory. Ivy wishes she could tear the photograph right in half.

/ * \

Ivy often has the house to herself after she and her mother leave her father. They move to the town with the cheapest rent they could find. Her mother works odd hours, enough so that it's not uncommon for Ivy to not see her for a few days at a time. Ivy finds herself with more time alone than she could ever need or want.

(She is not lonely. She is not lonely.)

At school, it is hard to break away from her learned silence. Groups and cliques have already formed. They part just enough to give her a glimpse of what it could be like, not enough to let her in. Being a part of them something she wishes or constantly, but fear, one she can’t tame, crawls up from deep inside her and makes her hold her tongue whenever she goes to speak.

(Ivy wishes she could tear the photograph right in half.)

So Ivy throws herself into her schoolwork, into her sketchbook. The best connections are the ones she forms with her teachers, the ones she loses after each year. They're always proud of her, emailing her mother, in lieu of the parent-teacher conferences that her mother can never make, with the same thing each year:  _ dutiful, smart, excels in writing, but a little quiet, could stand to push herself to interact with her peers more... _

Ivy never does. She’s become good at pretending—being okay with being alone, only interacting with others in shy smiles and nods, one-liners that others forget but she doesn’t. She never quite overcomes that learned fear within her, the one that whispers to her to stay quiet, stay unnoticed, hide.

/ * \

Whenever Ivy’s mother is there to see her off in the morning, her mother tells her how beautiful she is, how proud she is of her, how lovely she is. Ivy never really believes it, and nobody else seems to, not until sixth grade.

Boys—ones she’s never spoken to, ones whose names she doesn’t even know—begin stopping her in the hall, asking things like  _ how did you do on that test in Math?  _ or  _ so what’s going on with you this weekend?  _

Ivy isn’t sure how to handle the attention. She does the only thing she knows how to do: she fakes it, laughing and smiling at just the right moments, playing the same game she would with her father. 

(She plays the game well.)

As the weeks pass by, the trickle turns into a stream. Their flirting, invitations, and advances all get increasingly apparent, and—

It eases an ache, although it doesn’t quite dispel it. It’s safe and natural, like the security that comes along with spring, to play the game again. Having something like friends is fulfilling, like putting in that last piece of a puzzle.

All of it feels  _ right _ .

She starts encouraging all of it: she flirts back, refines herself to be coy and hard-to-get. And it works. More and more boys become interested in her: her phone becomes filled with contacts, boys she hasn’t spoken to more than once or twice in the hallways.

Her first date is two weeks into the year; her first kiss is three weeks into the year. She doesn’t experience any real connection, any telltale sparks that she so desperately yearns for.

So she keeps searching, and the ache lingers. Manageable, now, like a headache that just won’t go away, one that only hurts when she thinks about it too much. 

/ * \

At the end of sixth grade, Ivy’s mother sits her down with a seriousness Ivy is not accustomed to. It’s rare that they spend much time together, and rarer still that her mother won’t try her best to make their time together as enjoyable as possible.

“Ivy, darling,” she starts, her voice soothing and kind, like she's trying to pacify her. “I just want you to know that I always want the best for you. And I…” She hesitates, pain flickering across her face for a moment. “I don’t think that’s with me. I can barely spend any time with you. You deserve to live somewhere you can be happy, somewhere you won’t be lonely.”

Ivy has to bite her tongue. She’s bitter about so much that she’s lost track, how lonely she is with her mother being gone all the time only one off the long, long list. 

“I think you deserve a future. A future—a future better than what you’re being offered right now. Your school isn’t known for its prospects, you know. And you do so well—you’re the star of that school, I swear.” She smiles fondly at Ivy, shakes her head. “So I scrimped some, researched some, and I found a boarding school for you, dear. You’ve heard of them, I’m sure—St. Cecilia’s."

Ivy has: it's a stereotypical rich kids’ school, one not too far from where they live, maybe a hour's drive or so. It's not the most prestigious school, and Ivy's heard enough nasty rumors of students doing sacrilegious things, but they rank often enough in academic and athletic competitions that they've made a name for themselves as a school that produces a decent amount of gems.

Ivy's visceral reaction is that she absolutely does not want to go there. She doesn't want to abandon the life she's finally started making here, where she's finally started to fit in, finally started to have something like  _ friends _ . Leaving now, to go to some boarding school full of affluent kids who have never suffered a day in their life, would be the worst thing imaginable.

Besides, it's not like her mother being gone all the time is something new. It's not like she hasn't learned to take care of herself. Why bother trying to fix something that has stood the test of time for so long?

Her mother goes on, something about how St. Cecilia's has a policy for distinguished but low-income students that allows them to attend at a severely discounted cost or none at all depending on their circumstances, and Ivy's chest flares up in anger.

She does not want anyone's pity, least of all from kids who don't know what it's like to go days without eating, who don't know what it's like to have to slave away for a chance at a future.

So she says as much, letting every single one of her thoughts out, her voice acerbic. her mother's face turns up in an indescribable emotion.

There is a long, gratifying moment of silence.

“Ivy,” she starts, and she sounds so achingly tired that Ivy almost regrets it. “I know that this all has been… hard on you. And I can’t apologize enough for the way the world has been for you. But I think that this would be a new beginning for you, a new lease on life. I think that this would let you live the way you deserve to live—happy and surrounded by teachers and friends who care about you, who can make your future more than a pipe dream. I can't offer that for you here.”

There is truth to what her mother is saying. Ivy understands that. But she has finally, finally found her semblance of happiness, finally found a role for herself. 

"I'm not going," she tells her mother before she goes and locks herself in her room.

If her mother cries that night, clear through the paper-mâché walls of their shabby house, it's not her fault.

/ * \

There are girls around school who resent Ivy. It’s more jealousy than anything else, bitterness born of her sudden popularity, and maybe some disgust with the way she presents herself. Ivy tries her best to sidestep around it, not cause trouble, and hide, still, whenever she can.

She can’t avoid all of the consequences. There was always talk of how strange and shy she was, but now that she’s become more socially involved, they’ve turned to a different shade: less like small talk, more pointed.

Ivy can handle people not liking her; she’s handled worse. But what cuts deep enough to sting is the ill intent behind what people she liked, people she had considered friends, say about her. 

Still, she can manage. Things are okay. She doesn’t regret the times when she was quiet, but she’s not as lonely as she used to be, and the loneliness was always the worst part.

Her reputation is not the best, but stable. That is, until the boyfriend of one of the most popular girls in the school sets his eyes on her. Then come the sly digs and withering glares as she walks down the hall, the not-so-subtle way that the more girls begin to ignore her. 

Ivy tries to hold him back; she really does. But affection is something she craves the same way a flower yearns for sunlight. In the end, she doesn’t try as hard to shut him down as she should have. A part of her likes holding his attention too much to not to encourage it.

(It doesn’t go further than a few sheltered, silent kisses that they never really speak about.)

Her reputation keeps worsening. The hostility she faces never quite becomes explicit bullying, but if Ivy was alone in the earlier grades by something like choice, it certainly isn’t now. 

Eventually, most of the boys begin to avoid her, too, and she stops getting new texts when she wakes up or when she leaves class. She should have expected it, but the slow petering off of their attentions still hurts.

The few boys who are off the social radar like her still pay attention to her, though. She throws herself at them in her loneliness, knowing that neither of them really like the other, that it’s just for fun. That is when Ivy really begins to think about what she’s doing.

There’s no point to it: it’s mindless, done on instinct. It doesn’t make her happy anymore. It isn’t making  _ anyone _ happy. All it’s doing is trying to fill a void that grows bigger and bigger with each day.

This isn’t the life, the future, that she wants for herself. Ivy realizes, startlingly, how much she doesn't like who she’s becoming. But she doesn’t think there’s a way to stop herself: she has no way to supplement the loss.

She has no control over her own happiness. When she imagines her future living like this, the fear that overtakes her is frigid, stinging just like frostbite: an eternity of hopping from person to person, playing a game instead of living, never, ever being able to bare herself. It’s barely a life, and she doesn’t want to waste the only one she has.

She forces herself to avoid boys, to push them away, to reset everything back to the way it was when she was younger. She succeeds, and the loneliness returns as though it never left. She can't decide which is worse.

But she can’t seem to envision not falling prey to one or the other as long as she’s here.

Lying awake at night, she remembers she has a way out: St. Cecilia’s is there, looming in her mind.

She seizes the chance.

/ * \

Ivy’s legs are all wobbly and frail, like a newborn fawn’s, when she arrives at St. Cecilia’s for orientation. It’s obvious she shouldn’t be here. She must be missing cues left and right and making a fool of herself. She doesn’t belong.

But nobody says a word to her. There are a few glances her way now and then, on the account of her being new, nothing as egregious as she expected.

When she meets her roommate, her first thought is that she is exactly who Ivy wishes she could be: wholly herself, more than willing to stand out, and wildly honest. It’s such a contrast to Ivy, who wishes she could shed her skin the same way Nadia so clearly has. Ivy likes her immediately; when she says as much, Nadia just snorts like Ivy expected she would and tells her, “You aren’t so bad yourself.”

Ivy hadn’t really spoken with anyone during the orientation ceremony, too shy to wheedle her way into the groups that had already formed and too anxious to approach someone alone. The bad start left a sour taste in her mouth, a worry lingering over her mind like clouds.

With those few words, though, the lightness in her turns to something more pleasant, more of a sense of anticipation than dread. Ivy thinks, over that voice in her head, that maybe it won’t be like last time. Maybe she can make this all work. 

/ * \

Nadia’s brother is like something out of a dream. He’s that type of handsome she only ever sees in glossed-up magazines, the type everyone says is totally fake—yet here it is, standing right before her, real as can be.

She has third period with Nadia and her brother. When Nadia introduces them to one another, Ivy stutters through her greeting like she’s in fifth grade and it’s her first time really talking to a boy. It’s unlike her to lose her composure like this, to drop her act. Ivy hates herself a little for it.

Jason, though (and what a pretty name that is for a pretty face, Ivy thinks), just smiles at her and goes along with it like Ivy isn’t being horribly pitiful. The boys at her old school would’ve descended on her like vultures. This kindness Ivy isn’t used to, and it flusters her even further.

When they all sit back down again as class begins, Ivy catches Nadia smiling at her, all secret and sweet. Their gazes meet and Nadia winks at her. Ivy is mortified, but there’s something about it so painstakingly  _ normal _ . 

She wants to hold the feeling close to her heart forever.

/ * \

Ivy sits next to a boy in her fourth period class who gives her an odd feeling. He’s always too  _ perfect _ , not a hair out of place or a word out of line. It reminds her of herself when she was younger. Unease crawling through her, Ivy decides to reach out to him. 

She makes her voice as sweet and unassuming as possible when she asks him, a few weeks into the year, “Would you be able to help me out with this new assignment? I don’t really… get the whole, y’know, character foil thing, and you always seem to have a handle on what’s happening, so I thought I’d ask you. You totally don’t have to! I know we don’t really even know each other… I probably should’ve started with that. I’m Ivy.” She laughs lightly at herself before she continues. “It’s good to meet you, uh…”

His eyes flit away for a second—he’s nervous, Ivy can tell. “Matt,” he says, carefully, like he’s testing the waters. “My name is Matt. I’d be happy to help you if you need it, but you seem to be doing just fine, going by our class discussions. What is it exactly that you’re stuck on?”

Ivy is flustered for a second—she should’ve thought of that, but she didn’t expect Matt to be paying any attention to her. “Well, you know,” she hedges, “I don’t really get how Jim and Will are parallels, or why that matters. I get how they’re different and all, but what is that supposed to add?” She smiles at him meekly.

Matt raises an eyebrow at that. “If you insist,” he acquiesces. “I have clubs most days of the week, but I’m free Tuesdays in the evening, if you are?”

Ivy nods eagerly. She really processes Matt’s features; he’s not quite as picture-perfect as Jason, but he’s neat and refined in that endearing way that would make someone want to bring him home to their parents. He’s on the boyish side of handsome, trying too hard to be mature, but still, again, endearing.

For a sudden, horrible second, Ivy wants to kiss him, just to see what it would be like. But Matt is already walking away and sparing Ivy from… whatever this is. His  _ my room number is 124, so feel free to come by anytime after dinner  _ almost went through one ear and out the other.

She’s uncharacteristically quiet when she gets back to her room. Nadia fusses over her until Ivy convinces her that she’s fine, just a little under the weather, in order to make her leave Ivy alone. 

Ivy stays awake that night, staring at the ceiling and listening to her heart beat in time to Nadia’s gentle breathing, and swears she will not let herself fall back into the same habits.

/ * \

Nadia knows Ivy needs tutoring no more than Jason does, so when Ivy tells her she has a tutoring session with Matt that night, her reply is sardonic. “Already gotten over Jason, huh? Moving onto bigger and better things!” She’s giggling at her own joke. 

Ivy shoots her a glare as she stuffs her copy of  _ Something Wicked this Way Comes  _ into her bag alongside her notebook. “I never had eyes on your brother.”

“Yeah, and I’m the Virgin Mary herself. You were practically a puddle when you met him. He told me he’s never had anyone react like that before.”

“He did not!”

“Yeah, he didn’t. He gets that reaction all the time. Still hilarious every time to see him work his magic, though. And I gotta give you a hard time for it, because you were  _ gone _ .”

Ivy flips her the bird, and Nadia cackles. She barely gets out a goodbye as Ivy leaves.

Matt opens the door promptly. He sits her down at his desk, and as Ivy glances over his belongings, she notices all the colored page markers in his copy of the book that were pointedly not there last class. Matt uses those markers to flip to his first page as he begins speaking. Ivy has to interrupt him: “Uh, did you seriously go through everything we’ve read just to—”

“Yes. Wouldn’t anyone?”

Ivy has to hold back a laugh. “I don’t… think so.”

Matt glances away for a second before turning his attention back to the book. “Well, I did. It helps me remember and understand everything, anyway.”

Ivy smiles at him. “Well, thank you. I appreciate it a lot.” A twinge of guilt runs through her at that he went through such effort, because, honestly, who  _ doesn’t  _ understand how these characters are foils, but it’s not the end of the world.

“So,” Matt clears his throat. “The start of this chapter has a passage that I think really captures Will’s character…”

/ * \

After a few sessions of tutoring, Matt stops speaking like he’s constantly on a script and actually lets himself smile at Ivy’s wisecracks.

Every now and then, Ivy’s gaze drifts too close to his lips or lingering too long on the slope of his nose. Matt doesn’t say a word, but she catches him looking, too. She’s not oblivious to the way people act when they’re hiding a crush, and Matt is a dead ringer for liking Ivy maybe a little too much.

But Ivy has pledged to herself that she won’t fall down that rabbit hole again. Even if Matt genuinely likes her, she doesn’t even know if she likes Matt. Most likely than not, her loneliness is crawling up from the ugly, bitter depths of herself, wanting to manifest itself once more, because Nadia and Jason alone aren’t enough.

If Ivy maybe gets a little too close to kissing Matt, then nobody has to know. If she has to make a hurried excuse about how she made plans with Nadia and forgot about them to protect herself, then that’s just how the pieces are falling. If Ivy can’t admit to herself how close she is to falling down the rabbit hole again, then that’s nobody’s business but hers.

/ * \

Her loneliness creeps up in other ways, even if she doesn’t quite notice it. She’s enamored with Jason, who’s everything nice and sweet wrapped up with a bow. She can’t stand to be apart from Nadia and Jason and their other friends—Jason’s roommate and their other friends from previous years—for more than a few hours.

How could  _ that _ be wrong? They all make her heart buoyant with happiness and purpose, with a sense of belonging. None of the jabs at her insecurities she’s so used to from her old school, none of the uncertainty of where she stands in everyone’s opinions.

They’re all  _ kind _ , like the friends Ivy has wished she could have since she was a child who couldn’t quite understand loneliness. Jason is always complimenting her on her art and ribbing her about how she’s a rival for class rankings, Nadia is an expert at reading her and never lets her wallow in a bad mood for too long, Peter is always there to talk about the most inane and important things alike, and Matt—Matt feels like someone she’s known her whole life. It’s everything she ever wanted.

There are double “dates” to the arcade, the relaxed kind where everyone is more just friends than anything else and are only divided by who pairs up with who on the team games; there are those spontaneous shopping trips and meals at restaurants; there are study groups where the only one who really cares about studying is Matt.

It’s all quaintly  _ normal _ , like her home life was dreamed up. She never thought she could achieve this.

The months turn to a year before she even notices it.

/ * \

If Ivy could just stay at St. Cecilia’s the entire summer, she would. The thought of seeing her mother again sparks a deep-rooted fear in her, that things may somehow suddenly reset back to sixth grade and before, that she’ll have to spend the summer all alone, and—

Ivy pointedly does not want to go back home over summer break.

“Ugh, tell me about it,” Nadia groans in reply when Ivy says as much to her. “I couldn’t have been raised by warmer people, let me tell you. I think the only people who can edge them out are in Siberia. They used to make Jason walk home from his baseball games when he struck out, and the games were  _ miles _ away from home.”

Ivy pauses in her packing, biting her lip. “I mean, my mom’s not quite that bad. I just hate how always working, ‘cause she’s never around. I practically had to raise myself.”

Nadia glances at Ivy from the corner of her eye. “You’ve mentioned you’re not well off, right? Isn’t she just trying to support you the best she can?”

“Well—yeah. But I just hate—I was so  _ lonely _ all the time. And even with how much she was working, I’d go days barely eating if I didn’t have school.”

“I think she was trying her best. Sounds like she cares so much that she’d sacrifice herself for you. Don’t you think it’d kill her to do that to you?”

“Obviously not enough if she kept doing it,” Ivy huffs. “It feels like she doesn’t care half the time. She pressured me to come here and all when I didn’t want to at first, and, like—she should’ve respected what I thought and wanted more than she did.”

“Ivy,” Nadia says slowly, and there is danger in her voice. “Your mother killed herself every day to provide for you and give you a roof over your head when she could’ve just totally neglected your wellbeing. You’ve told me how she would make time for you above  _ sleeping _ when she had some time off. And then she digs herself an even deeper hole financially to get you out of your shithole of a school to send you here, where you have a chance, and you think she doesn’t care?”

Ivy swallows. “I think she should consider how much she hurt me.”

“I think she is,” Nadia says, whirling around to face Ivy. “She got you out of that home to get you to a prestigious school that probably gouges her. She sacrificed her entire life to support you. And I—” She lets out a shuddering breath. “I wish my parents gave half as much of a damn about me as your mother does about you. I really do.”

Nadia turns back around and closes her unpacked suitcase, breaths coming fast and harsh. She doesn’t even glance back at Ivy as she leaves their room, slamming the door.

Suddenly, Ivy’s heart is dead cold and silent.

/ * \

There are still a few days left before school lets out for the year, and Nadia is not talking to her.

It’s a wound she isn’t sure how to cope with. Before she realizes it, she’s resorted to the one thing that she knows does work: her first kiss since she came to St. Cecilia’s is with a boy years older than her whose name she doesn’t even know. He’s one of the lucky ones who don’t have a roommate. When he takes her back to his room, they go further than they should. The distraction fulfills her the same it always did: Ivy doesn’t feel as lonely anymore with a warm body tangled with hers. Still the warmth fades quickly.

She goes home with hickies on her neck from more than a few boys, and her mother doesn’t say a word about it.

Summer passes by in the same pattern. This time, Ivy can’t be bothered to care about her reputation.

/ * \

St. Cecilia’s has a rule that there will be no switching of roommates unless there is significant physical or emotional danger brought about by a roommate pair in order to “encourage bonds among classmates.” It’s the stupidest thing Ivy has ever heard, but what matters is that Nadia will still be her roommate.

Ivy is worried she’ll puke as she walks into St. Cecilia’s for eighth grade orientation. Nonetheless, Peter and Jason both surprise her with bear hugs as soon as they see her. Lucas, Tanya, and the others react similarly, like her fight with Nadia never even happened, and the gears in Ivy’s brain whir.

When she finally sees Nadia, she shoots Ivy a glare, but otherwise stays silent. It’s unlike her, given how Nadia isn’t ever one to stay quiet about anyone or anything, and it unnerves Ivy.

When they’re released to their dorms later that evening, Nadia is already there, unpacking. She looks up when Ivy enters, and at Ivy’s puzzled gaze, she says, “I haven’t forgiven you, so don’t get that idea in your head. But I’m not so petty that I’ll ruin your friendships with everyone else. I’m not about to be a total bitch.”

Ivy wants to believe her, to trust the Nadia she held so dear in her thoughts last year. But putting faith in someone has never worked out for her before, not with her parents, not at her last school with any of the people she thought to be her friends, and, given their fight, not with Nadia.

She’s hurt, but most of all, she is scared. She can’t stop the words from spilling out of her mouth: “Surprising. I wouldn’t have expected that from you.”

The moment she says it, she wants to take it back more than anything else in the world. She can’t ignore the way Nadia’s face turns up in shock and anger, maybe a little bit of hurt.

“Yeah?” Nadia’s voice is scathing. “I always thought you knew how to be something other than an attention whore. You know the whole school is talking about how you slept with Chris?” Ivy’s face flickers with confusion before it dawns on her. “Yeah, maybe you should’ve learned from middle school and kept those legs closed.”

Ivy told Nadia about middle school in confidence. Having her insecurities thrown right back in her face makes something in her shatter. She can feel the frog in her throat and pushes it down.

It must show on her face, because Nadia just sighs. “Look, I told you I’m not gonna start shit with everyone else. It’s not worth the effort, so don’t worry your pretty little head over it. But you better stay away from my brother. Okay? Great. Conversation over.”

“Nadia—” Ivy’s a trembling mix of anger and regret, torn between wanting to apologize and wanting to cut Nadia right back. 

“I said I’m done talking to you,” Nadia turns back to her luggage, waving her hand dismissively. “Go have fun with another boy or something. I don’t want to see you right now.”

If Ivy heads straight to the bathroom to cry, then nobody but her has to know about it. 

/ * \

Nadia stays true to her word: not a single person in their friend group treats her differently. That’s not to say there’s no change in their dynamics with Nadia’s persistent comments about her sexual activity. The group isn’t so sure how to handle Ivy and Nadia’s sudden divide.

At first, they laugh awkwardly. But as the weeks go by, they begin expecting Nadia’s insults. The laughter becomes genuine, every now and then, if one was especially good. Ivy feels so, so small whenever they laugh like that.

Most all of them in the group have approached her about the shift between her and Nadia, but given up when Ivy only gave ambivalent replies. That’s not to say that everyone is totally going along with it. Ivy appreciates the way Peter always shoots Nadia a glare or swats her when a comment is particularly out of line, as well as the way Matt will refuse to laugh at any of the jokes.

(Peter still laughs sometimes, though, and Matt never says anything to defend her. Nothing hurts like the times the people who are supposed to be on her side actually aren’t.)

They would rather laugh at Nadia’s jokes, have her feel included, than defend Ivy. It makes it clear where they all stand.

So maybe Ivy isn’t as lonely as she had been in the past, but she's lost that sense of connection she so craves, the one that she thought she’d finally found for real. It’s hard to avoid falling down the rabbit hole after that.

She quickly develops a reputation; she quickly finds she doesn’t care anymore about what other people say about her. It can’t hurt worse than Nadia’s jeering and taunting. And maybe Ivy is encouraging Nadia by proving her right, but Ivy thinks that, at this point, Nadia will die on this hill, no matter what Ivy says or does.

Over time, it gets easier. She gets used to it, becoming known for being whatever a boy wants her to be. But she still can’t quell that ache in her chest, and she thinks that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

/ * \

Missing Nadia is a constant and just as inherent within her as her heartbeat. The part of herself that Ivy showed when they fought was ugly, not what she wants to be perceived as.

She knows Nadia has a point. Maybe Ivy was too clouded by selfishness when it came to her mother; maybe Ivy was too immature to really understand what her mother was going through. Whatever the case, she knows she could in no way understand what Nadia has gone through—and goes through every summer—with her parents, and that it had shaped Nadia’s perspective on what a “good” parent is.

Ivy is aware that Nadia is not the ugly person she puts on display whenever she disses her. Nadia acts, just like Ivy does: she puts up a barrier of hate as her shield. But Ivy can see through it. She remembers the Nadia who was bared to her before this, and knows which one of them is the performer.

It frightens her how much she misses Nadia—not the the sense of acceptance and being found she had when she was around Nadia, but Nadia herself, her brashness, her humor, her smile. 

So she tries to patch things up with Nadia. She knows she’s not blameless in their split, having fired off pointed insults and having been contrary just for the sake of making Nadia’s life harder in moments of frustration. She doesn’t expect Nadia to forgive her immediately, or maybe even at all. But she has do something. 

Her voice is tentative when she breaches their shared silence, halfway into freshman year, with a soft “Nadia?”

“Oh, the princess is deigning to speak to a commoner, I see. What does her highness want?” Ivy bites her lip at the way Nadia’s voice drips with condescension; it’s the start to this conversation that she expected, but not the one she wanted.

“I, um…” Ivy stammers, barely getting the words out. She’s thought for nights upon nights about how to approach this, the best window to use to glean Nadia’s favor, and came up empty each time. “I wanted to apologize. For last year and orientation, and for what—for what I said.”

Nadia puts down her book and looks over to Ivy. “Uh-huh,” she says, clearly unconvinced. “Which part, might I ask?”

“All of it,” Ivy replies in a rush. “What I said about my mother. What I said about you. It wasn’t right.”

“Look,” Nadia starts, and Ivy stills at her tone. “You can’t fix everything with a cheap apology like that. Do you think how much you’ve hurt your mother, how much you’ve hurt me, can be all patched up and good just because you start feeling a little bad about it? Try walking a mile in our shoes. You have the whole world without having to lift a finger, while people like us have jack shit.” Nadia’s look is pointed and poignant all in one. “You’re not convincing me that you’re not just apologizing to clear your conscience of this  _ horrible _ burden you carry.”

The sarcasm at the end of her sentence is like knives. 

Ivy doesn’t try again.

/ * \ 

Despite everything, Jason is still genuinely kind to Ivy. It makes Ivy’s heart trembles with happiness each time he does something tiny yet thoughtful, be it remembering just the way she likes her tea from the local café—she tried coffee once, near the beginning of this year, because, according to Peter,  _ how can you be a sophomore and have never tried coffee?  _ and  _ hated _ it—or giving her help on the grammar he knows she finds tricky in French.

It reminds her a little of what her and Nadia used to be like. Jason and Nadia are pointedly different yet eerily alike: they have the same snark, same kindness, same passion, but each quality is on different layers of their selves, creating a whole new person.

Ivy likes Jason. She likes him every which way. Jason brings out a sense of freedom in that he doesn’t seem to expect anything from her, or, rather, that he would prefer that she doesn’t act as she usually does. He already deals with enough girls throwing themselves at him, after all. So when she’s around him, she forgets about acting, about being this perfect version of herself.

Her heart is let loose around Jason, and Ivy wouldn’t cage it back up for the world.

/ * \

Ivy rarely speaks about herself or her home life to any of her friends. She fears mentioning it would set her even further apart from all of them, especially since Nadia and Jason never breathe a word of their parents, either. Peter, though, doesn’t hide that he has a bad relationship with his father. 

He never harps about it or lets the subject linger too long on the topic, but he never makes an effort to pretend he has a perfect family, either. He makes it all seem normal, like having a family that’s all broken up isn’t something to be ashamed of, when Ivy has always hidden her family situation deep, deep down behind locks upon locks that only Nadia has managed to break through.

Ivy can’t help but be jealous. Peter is the kind of kid nobody would look at and think to be from a torn-up family, when Ivy thinks anyone who spares even a glance at her can tell immediately, no matter how much she avoids the subject. 

The question slips out without her permission one night when they’re doing their math homework together, breaking a comfortable silence that Ivy instantly wishes she could repair: “How are you… okay with your family situation?”

Peter tenses up for a moment. He glances to her and then back to his paper before beginning to fidget with his pencil. The eraser is bitten to the stub, and Ivy wonders if he’d be chewing it now if not for that.

There is a silence fraught with something Ivy can’t place. “I’m not, really,” Peter says, eventually. “It’s not that I miss my father, or anything. I’m glad he’s gone. But sometimes I look at all the students around here when their parents come to pick them up for summer, at their picture-perfect families, and I just wonder what it could be like if…”

Ivy knows exactly the feeling, the wondering, that he’s talking about, but her throat is too tight for her to speak. “But then I tell myself that thinking that is stupid. Nobody has that picture-perfect family that I dream up every time I see a family hugging one another. There’s always something beneath the surface, and, well, mine’s just a little more obvious. We’re all the same.”

“How can you think that?” Ivy’s voice shakes a little, but she can’t tell if it’s from anger, fear, or sadness. “My father—my father…” She trails off, voice cracking, and Peter looks at her with understanding in his gaze.

“Mine wasn’t dad of the year, either, to say the least,” Peter says with a sardonic smile. “But that’s just something we carry with us, you know? It doesn’t define us. And just like anything else, it’s something you can move past. I haven’t really done that, yet, but I’m working on it.” He smiles again, more genuine this time. “You don’t need to feel weird about it. Look around and I’ll bet you that any number of the kids you see here came from families with something just as bad as ours, maybe worse.”

Ivy nods, tentatively, feeling Peter’s words work their way down through her. Peter smiles at her encouragingly, patting her on the back. “You’ll be fine, okay?”

A tiny part of her believes that maybe she will be.

/ * \

Ivy has a rule: she will not get involved with anyone she knows or cares for. It makes it easier to break ties, in the end—it’s the best way to ensure that nobody is hurt.

(People get hurt. Both her and the boys, but which of them gets hurt more is up for debate. Still, it could always hurt more.)

Of all her rules, it has lasted the longest. But Matt has always been a little too pleasant to Ivy, been a little too attentive, been a little too protective. Even after Ivy became known as what she is, Matt never really changed; if anything, he only became kinder. 

Even though he will never be her knight in shining armor, him bringing that upon himself is almost sickeningly sweet, and it’s certainly the most Ivy feels cared for by anyone. So she can’t help but wonder, sometimes, what it would be like to be with him. If maybe she’d feel safe, warm, protected, happy. If they’d be like that tale of lovers who never look back from one another. If…

It’s junior year when Ivy breaks her very last rule. She has been haunted by these thoughts for weeks, months. Since the two of them met in seventh grade, maybe. But the straw that breaks the camel’s back is Lucas telling the group about how he walked in on Matt getting confessed to, how hysterical it was to watch Matt awkwardly shut the girl down. 

Ivy flares up with jealousy as she realizes that this is not the first time Matt has been confessed to, and it won’t be the last. Matt could move on, fall in love with someone else any day now, and Ivy would have missed out on her chance at picture-perfect happiness. Lucas’ story and Matt’s mortified objections fade into the background as her mind whirs. This is her chance to fix everything.

Matt is someone who’s easy to love, so he should be easy to fall  _ in _ love with. 

Ivy knows Matt will never have the courage to confess. It’s not like him, not to mention that he’s sat on this crush for years without saying a word of it to Ivy. So Ivy takes it into her own hands.

Their first kiss is a little less than a week after. Ivy waits for the spark, and waits, and waits, but it never happens. No rush of elation or fluttery feeling in her chest.

Matt smiles at her like he’s just been given the world, and Ivy can only fake a grin right back, as she always does.

/ * \

Matt and Ivy never talk about what they are—if they’re dating, something in-between, or nothing at all. 

Matt seems to believe that they’re together-together, and Ivy lets him believe it, because at least seeing him happy brings her some form of happiness herself. It’s endearing, seeing the way he grins ear-to-ear whenever he looks down at their hands in one another’s, and Ivy doesn’t want to lose that. So she stays quiet. Now there’s something to look forward to, something that’ll make her heart swell a bit with an off-brand joy. She just has to tell herself that it’s enough until she believes it.

If Ivy gets unhappier each time they kiss and she feels nothing, each time they hold hands and she can’t stand the way the callouses on Matt’s hands feel, each time Matt walks her to her room and kisses her, whispering goodnight alongside sweet nothings, then that’s her own burden to carry. 

/ * \

Nadia only becomes more persistent with her jokes after Matt announces that they’re dating. The first of many is  _ oh, Matthew, you should’ve wrapped it before you tapped it _ , and they don’t get any better as she goes on. Matt glares at her—as well as Lucas, who always catcalls—with fire in his eyes every time.

He doesn’t ever say a word to Nadia about it, though. Ivy doesn’t have the hope that he will anymore. But he surprises her one night a few months into their relationship by telling her this: “By the way, I talked to Nadia about her behavior towards you. I told her that it’s inappropriate and asked her to stop, since I know you aren’t the kind of girl that she says you are—you’re too good for that.” 

His eyes don’t even flick over to Ivy’s for confirmation. “She insisted you are, but I just want you to know I don’t believe any of that about you. I’m on your side,” he says, emphatically, like it’s hiding something of a deeper meaning. “And I’ll keep trying to convince Nadia. You don’t deserve to have her heckling you all the time.”

“Yeah, I don’t know where she got all that stuff from,” Ivy lies, smooth as silk. “Thank you, Matt. I appreciate that a lot.”

Matt smiles at her fondly. “Not a problem.”

Ivy doesn’t think about what it means, that Matt doesn’t know who she really is. That his affection for her is founded on lies. That the person she thought cared for her most would hate her if he knew the first thing about her.

/ * \

Nadia sneers at her that night when she comes back to their room. “You didn’t have to sic your boytoy on me, you know.”

Ivy stays silent. That’s enough for Nadia to get the hint and do the same.

/ * \

The distance comes easily.

/ * \

The further Ivy is from a person, the closer she has to be to someone else. There always has to be someone to fill the void. The one she turns to in order to fill the void left by Nadia is Jason. It’s not by choice that Ivy begins to trail after him like this, but if she was conscious of who she chose, she’d still choose Jason.

She and Jason have always been friends, but never tight-knit like he and Peter are or the way Tanya and Lucas are. They grow closer over the course of a few months. 

It starts off small. Jason could probably teach half the classes he takes himself, and although Ivy is generally more than competent in her classes, she couldn’t tell a moose apart from a French imperative, so she asks him for help. It becomes a weekly thing, Matt's tutoring having ended a while back, Peter sometimes joining and sometimes not. Before Ivy knows it, the two of them are catching one another’s glances in class and snickering over something the teacher said, or walking to class together off the beaten path. They become known as  _ that _ couple, the one that sits at the corner table in Starbucks for hours on end.

Matt’s. His face screws up around Jason, and he always takes her hand in his when Jason sits down at the group’s lunch table. But he never says a word, and Ivy is content to let sleeping dogs lie.

Then, one day, it happens: Ivy feels a semblance of that spark. That trembling, electric spark that runs up one’s veins right into their heart and makes the whole world stop for a moment. And it’s not with Matt. 

It happens when Peter cracks some joke that Ivy didn’t overhear and Jason bursts out laughing, grinning like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, eyes scrunched and dimple evident in his cheek.

_ He’s beautiful _ , Ivy’s otherwise-blank mind supplies. Then all her thoughts flood in: that she’s never felt quite like this before, that this must be what full-bodied happiness is, that she has a chance, that this is the way it’s supposed to be.

Ivy looks at Jason. She cannot stop looking at Jason. She thinks that she would like to be the one to make him so happy, and be made so happy in return.

/ * \

As the days go by, Ivy becomes more and more enthralled in the questions of if Jason’s lips are as soft as they look, if they would feel like light caressing her shoulder, if Jason’s hands would be warm and calloused or smooth and cold as silk, and if Jason’s heart skips a beat when he looks at her, too.

She thinks about all these things even while she’s with Matt; she does not feel guilty. She knows she should, but she can’t work it up in her to be ashamed over feeling something as untainted as this.

Matt readily believes her when she says she’s fine, just been sleeping badly lately. She doesn’t know how she feels about breaching his trust, but it will not be enough to ruin the first good thing to come to her in ages.

/ * \

Participating in the school play is a form of catharsis for Ivy: stepping out of herself, her defined character and self, and into someone else entirely, is freeing. If only for one moment, she can shed the persona she wears with so little pride.

Ivy imagines it’s similar for Matt—the two of them have been in the plays together since freshman year. They’re practicing together for auditions, a few days after Sister Chantelle’s announcement that the play this year was  _ Romeo & Juliet,  _ on Matt’s idea that they should aim to be Romeo and Juliet together. It’s so sickeningly sweet that Ivy couldn’t help but agree.

They’re practicing the one scene they have to get down pat if they have any shot at getting the leads: the balcony scene. As Matt reads “Wouldst thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?” Ivy glimpses her next lines, something in her chest trembles.

“But to be frank, and give it thee again. And yet I wish but for the thing I have,” she parries. But her voice hitches at the next line: “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, more I have, for both are infinite.”

Ivy’s eyes are stuck on those words as Matt recites the next verse somewhere in the background of her mind. She reads them again and again and thinks that the falsehood will seep right through her words; she is not meant to be Juliet at all. G-d stepping into her life for just a second to bring attention to just how different the two are in the worst ways.

/ * \

Matt and Jason duel over the role of Romeo during auditions, and Ivy’s mind wanders. The two of them are similar yet different, in the same way that Nadia and Jason are alike yet different. She can’t place her finger on what makes one of them better or worse than the other.

She lets her little crush get the better of her. She acts all pretty and sweet for Jason as she recites  _ I would not for the world they saw thee here _ , so he will attention to her above all the other girls. But when she glances back towards Matt and sees the envy in his eyes, she realizes that her little crush may not be so little. She prances back towards Matt, clinging to him.

At heart, Ivy is an actor. She plays whichever role needs to be played. So she’s not too surprised when she gets Juliet. Jason getting cast at Romeo, on the other hand, makes her halt. The first thought in her head is not of how Matt must feel, but  _ maybe this is some sort of sign. _

(As of late, some things seem too coincidental to not be planned, even if she has never been much of a believer.)

/ * \

Nadia is waiting for Ivy when she returns to their room that night. 

“I thought I told you to stay away from my brother,” she starts, danger lurking in her voice like a shark lurks underwater.

Ivy startles as the door closes behind her. “What do you mean? I’m not—we’re not—”

“Do you think I’m  _ stupid, _ Ivy?” Nadia asks, but it’s not a question. “I’m not blind. We can all see how you’re fawning over him every minute, looking up at him through your lashes like you’re some young schoolgirl—ugh, it makes me sick. And the way you were all over him during auditions today? Could you  _ be _ any more obvious?”

Ivy’s eyes flick to the floor and back to Nadia. “I’m with Matt right now,” she says, steely. “And—”

“And we all know that means nothing, sweetheart.” Nadia is talking to her like she’s a child. “Look, I’ll say it one more time. Jason is off-limits. I am not letting you use him like you do every other boy in this school. Christ, do you even know what you’re doing to Matt?” She shakes her head. “He’s not as stupid as you think he is. He doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong with you, and it’s killing him, Ivy. You—”

Nadia breathes a deep sigh and closes her eyes tight, pinching the bridge of her nose. Ivy looks at the way her feet dangle over the edge of her bed, boots shiny and sleek. They must be new. 

“Fix this shit with Jason and Matt before it gets worse, I’m telling you.” She pushes herself off the bed and walks past Ivy. “I’m going to spend time with Jason. You figure out what to do about this mess.”

Ivy tries.

/ * \

Ivy knows when she can and cannot fake things. Some things come easily to her, some harder, and some not at all.

One of the things she pointedly cannot fake is love. She used to be able to, with her father, but now she finds she just can’t force it to well up in her like she always could when she was a child. 

She cares for Matt; she really does. But there’s this wall between him and her heart that appeared sometime over the gradual crawl of the past year, insurmountable through Ivy’s countless attempts to scale it.

Ivy has accepted that she won’t love Matt the way she wishes she could, but she can’t let go. She placed her hopes and dreams on this relationship, too heavy a burden for something so fragile. To acknowledge that their relationship is a failure would be like acknowledging that she is one.

Ivy is selfish, and it is easier for her to let things remain as they are.

/ * \

Even after all this time, Ivy finds it difficult to be mean to Nadia, even though she knows that it’s silly to still hope for things to change. She can barely force the venom out of her mouth whenever she has to upkeep the act in their friend group—the guilt still lingers from when she slighted Nadia on her freshman-year acne issues—and she simply can’t do it when they’re alone or at the rate Nadia does.

As they leave for the rave, Ivy cannot find any words to reply when Nadia calls her a whore. Ivy’s mind is stuck on the double dates they had in seventh grade, how Nadia wouldn’t have missed those for the world. On how Nadia might as well be right, even—especially—considering how she’s using Matt. On everything that is wrong with this picture and everything she wishes she could change about it.

At the rave, Ivy wants nothing more than to forget the world around her. She knows she shouldn’t, but she doesn’t even think for a second before taking whatever it is that Lucas gives her. The change is near-instantaneous, the way the world melts and swirls around her. Dancing with Matt, she’s  _ happy _ .

It lasts mere moments before she collapses. She barely remembers how she got home. What she does remember is waking up to a glass of water on her nightstand, some painkillers, a clean set of clothes already laid out for her with a short note laid on top of it from Matt.

Her heart aches, but not in the way she wishes it would.

/ * \

Sometimes, Ivy wants to drop the act she puts up, just to see what happens. She lets a little bit of her self filter through the walls she puts up, just enough that she’s still safe and secure in her persona.

She always finds that for every step she takes forward, she takes two back. (Pain is a funny thing, Ivy thinks, as Nadia brazenly comments that  _ bathroom stalls don’t lie _ : sometimes the things that she cares about most hurt her the most.) 

The walls she’s built up are both a shelter and a prison. With each passing day, the walls loom higher and higher, and her hate for them extends deeper and deeper. She is exhausted of constantly playing pretend, knowing that not a single person cares for who she truly is.

But her act is the only safety net she has, the only way she truly knows how to live. Actors don’t get to choose their roles. So as she turns to kiss Matt, she forces herself to smile, and pushes down the sadness welling up in her.

/ * \

When Tanya invites her out to get wasted, honestly, it’s the best idea Ivy has heard in a long, long time. It’s certainly better than anything else she had planned for her birthday.

The alcohol burns so nicely in her throat, taking away her awareness along with the guilt, and Ivy is  _ happy  _ again. Everything in the world is sunshine and glitter. She can’t stop giggling over this and that as Tanya drags her home.

Tanya just about shoves Ivy through the door to Ivy’s room. As she stumbles in, the lights flash on. Ivy startles, almost losing her balance again, and the people around her begin to sing possibly the most insulting song she’s ever heard. In the moment, though, it’s the funniest thing she could imagine. She can’t help but go along with it and dance to the tune, smile overtaking her face.

She falls into Matt’s awaiting arms afterward. Face against his chest, she can feel his heartbeat in her cheek. “Thank you,” she murmurs through the haze clouding her head. “This is very sweet.”

She doesn’t deny it when Matt says that she’s wasted, because she really  _ is _ . It’s wonderful, though. As she canvases the party, even the pinata, which would usually make her sick with the implications, draws a giggle out of her. She tests the pinata bat (more of a stick, really) out, but with how drunk she is, she wouldn’t be able to get a good shot at the pinata at all. She turns to see if Matt’s around to help her out. The first person she sees is Jason, who’s talking to Peter. 

Her mind stutters for a second, blanks, then kicks into overdrive: in the dim light of the room, he’s more beautiful than ever. 

_ Jason, Jason, Jason.  _ The only one who she can drop the act around, the only one who seems to genuinely like the her behind the mask, the only one she’s safe and secure around. The only one, the only one, the only one. Her mind loops on that for a few moments, the pure wave of emotion and affection that runs through her at seeing Jason, and she wants nothing more than to be closest to him.

Peter obviously is drunk or high with the way he keeps having to stabilize himself on Jason, and Jason’s face contorts in frustration. She wants more than anything to smooth over the wrinkles in his forehead, to erase the irritation in his eyes, and see him smile just for her. She finds herself walking over, and at Jason’s  _ hey _ , she grins.

“You any good with a stick?” she teases, brandishing it at him.

It makes her happier than it should when Jason plays along. She gives him a second to settle things with Peter like he requests, a little spring to her step as she walks back over to the pinata. It makes her dizzy to look up, still—a definite no on trying to aim at that thing.

Seeing Jason coming over, she asks, “Is he okay?” She’d never seen Peter quite so unsteady on his feet before; it was strange to process to her dull mind.

“Yeah, he’s just fucked up,” Jason replies, and if Ivy weren’t drunk, she would’ve taken note of how he was a little too quick to answer her, a little too forceful in his way of speaking.

  
“That makes two of us,” Ivy laughs, but it’s cut short by Matt asking her to dance with him. 

Interacting with Matt is something that takes care and precision: it is difficult for Ivy to balance affection with genuinity, even more difficult to make sure that Matt doesn’t suspect her act. She barely manages when stressed and tired, and she cannot drunk.

From what Nadia’s told her, Matt already knows what Ivy really feels, anyway. It’s that, combined with her drunken inability to care about consequences, that makes the frosty  _ Matt, I’m talking to later  _ spill out. As she says it, the burden is tangibly lifted from her shoulders.

She turns to Jason and asks him, all coy, if he’s scared, as though she’s paving a road right under her footsteps. It’s the best thing she’s experienced in months. She can’t help but chase that feeling, even as Jason plays hard-to-get with her.

Jason has to like her, after all. This is how it should go: the popular boy with the popular girl, the two secretly-lonely kids finding solace in one another. It’s the storybook love she’s always yearned for.

(“You do know I’m misunderstood,” she tells him, all quiet, like she’s giving him the key to her heart. In a way, she is: she’s never opened up about just how much of her is an act before.)

Jason shoots her down and down again, though. For a horrifying moment, she thinks that maybe he actually doesn’t like her, that he sees everything that’s wrong with her. “Don’t you want to kiss me?” she pleads.

When Jason easily replies, “I want to kiss you,” warmth and pure joy rushes through her whole body, tingling right down to her fingertips. 

  
She wants to hear it again, and again, and again. “Don’t you want me just like I want you?”

When they kiss for the first time, gentle and sweet and everything she’s ever possibly imagined, that spark—the genuine article—finally,  _ finally _ bursts within her like fireworks.

  
She pulls him down for one more kiss, then another, then another, then another.

Ivy loves the way Jason’s lips are all red from kissing too much, or maybe just enough.   
  


The spark doesn’t fade for the whole night.

/ * \

When Ivy wakes up, she is glad Nadia decided not to come back to the room that night. Jason is already gone, making her deflate. Still, Ivy can feel his phantom touch on her arms, on her lips.

It’s almost too good to be true. But she wants to believe in it so badly that she doesn’t care about anything else.

Ivy smiles, soft and secret, and lets herself.

/ * \

She can’t keep her mind off Jason the next day. Her thoughts swirls around him, endless and whimsical, like he’s the center of a carousel. She’s so happy that it  _ hurts _ , filled to bursting.

She doesn’t have French today, so she doesn’t get to see Jason until she arrives at rehearsals that afternoon. Seeing him again, her heart trembles like a leaf in the wind. She can’t help but ask him, all playful, about when she’ll see him next. 

(She wants to chase that feeling until she can feel herself holding it in her hands.)

Rehearsal goes smoothly, or as smoothly as they can when she's working alongside Nadia. But when Ivy turns to her to tell her off, she slaps Ivy without hesitation, before Ivy can even speak a word. 

As Ivy holds her cheek during Sister Chantelle’s reprimand, she realizes that Nadia  _ knows.  _ Nadia meets her gaze with pure, fiery scorn. Ivy withers right down to nothing. 

She can’t stand to keep looking in those eyes, but she also can’t help but keep glancing back at them. Nadia’s anger is impossible to ignore, like a car accident. Sister Chantelle’s hand on her shoulder is heavy, contrasting her quiet  _ are you okay? _ , but it doesn’t break her from her reverie. She keeps holding her cheek; it stings more than it should.

She tries to focus on Matt and Jason, instead. Looking back on it, Ivy knows she should have noticed the aggression to Matt’s movements, Jason’s withdrawal. She doesn’t, not even when Matt shoves Jason away with more force than he needed to—the fight scene wasn’t one that Ivy knew the choreography to. 

The gasp she lets out when Matt chases down and shoves Jason, spitting out a slur, is audible.

Ivy remembers, surprisingly, enough of her birthday to recall what she said to Matt as well as the way his face twisted up in envy and anger. Matt hadn’t made even an attempt to talk to her that day—he  _ always  _ made an effort to interact with her whenever he saw her.

It’s her fault. She’s rooted in place with guilt and fear. 

But Ivy doesn’t get why Matt chose to call Jason that, of all things. Jason is very clearly—the memory returns to her, tangibly—not like that. He’s never had a girlfriend, as far as Ivy knows, and maybe that’s what Matt’s extrapolating from, but Matt’s never had a girlfriend, either. It doesn’t make much sense to her. Soon, the confusion filters out of her mind.

When Sister Chantelle yells for everyone to leave, she does so, glancing back at Jason with worry in her eyes. He doesn’t meet her gaze.

/ * \

That afternoon, countless emotions swirl within her, each wrestling to be at the forefront of her mind: guilt, hope, loneliness, affection. She doesn't do much of anything. She tries to distract herself by rereading and memorizing her lines for the play, but finds she can’t even remember what a line said seconds after reading it. 

Her thoughts keep wandering back to the night of her birthday, the way the spark tingled right through her entire body, the way she felt so connected with Jason, like the two of them were one being separated in two, like she’d finally found what she’s spent her entire life looking for.

After all, Jason likes her. Not the “her” that Matt liked, but  _ her _ . And Ivy realizes, as she lies there on her bed, sun filtering in through the curtains as it sets, that she really, truly likes Jason, too. She imagines a whole life ahead of her with Jason, the two of them together with a lovely house with white-picket fences, children, a golden retriever. 

She wants nothing more than that brand of happiness, and she thinks that maybe she loves him. Maybe she always has. 

After all, Ivy has never felt so intricately  _ known _ by someone as she has with Jason; Ivy has never felt so accepted by someone as she has with Jason; Ivy has never felt more happy than she has with Jason. If that’s not love, then what is?

The realization churns within her. As the minutes turn to hours, she becomes more and more convinced of its truth. It naturally settles, deep and comforting, within the caverns of her heart.

Still, that niggling fear, that anxiety in the back of her mind, whispers that Jason will never feel the same. But she  _ knows _ he does. They’ve connected over the past few years, they kept kissing on her birthday: Jason likes her. Jason is attracted to her. This  _ will _ be what she’s been looking for.

Ivy’s already planning to leave their room when Nadia begins to practice her cello. Ivy knows it from a mile away as an attempt at ruining her night, but it acts as a sign that she  _ should _ go talk to Jason instead. 

Jason is sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at his feet. He looks so dejected that it gives Ivy pause. But then she realizes that he’s probably missing Peter, with the way he left early and the two of them are attached at the hip, and that he would probably appreciate her company—she would, in his situation.

She knocks twice on his dresser as she walks in, and Jason looks up, features quickly changing to something carefully neutral. She doesn’t want to just pounce on him about her feelings, not when he seems so down, so she starts instead with something innocuous: “Leaving soon?”

Jason’s one-word answer puts her off. When doesn’t elaborate or contribute anything when she asks if he’s okay, she fumbles for something to say. She ends up apologizing for her behavior at the party—hoping that the depth of how sorry she is for Matt’s behavior shows through—before she can think better of it, but when Jason calls it—her— _ cute _ , her heart flutters right up out of her chest.

“But I meant all those things I told you,” she hears herself say. “My feelings for you are real, and I… Just know I wouldn’t lie.” She swallows as she sits down on the bed beside Jason, feeling her pulse race with hope, anxiety, everything mixed all up into one.

Jason’s question of  _ why _ throws her off. Trying to describe why she likes Jason is like trying to describe what the color blue looks like. She settles for saying that there’s “something” about him, hoping against hope that it expresses enough of how she feels. “I don’t know just what it is I’m doing here, when nothing’s clear,” she continues, getting up out of restlessness more than anything else.

Jason gets up from the bed and walks towards her, meeting her almost toe-to-toe, and asks her, “You want me to kiss you, don’t you? Kiss you is what I’m supposed to do.” She can barely feel her heart in her chest. It’s the most she’s drawn out of him this entire conversation, and that  _ he _ brought up how badly she wants him to kiss her makes her think that maybe he likes her just as much as she likes him.

“So are you going to?” she returns far more smoothly than she expected herself to.

“Am I?”

Ivy can feel his pulse in his wrist, racing fast, fast, fast.

It all goes quickly after that, Ivy too enraptured with the proof that Jason likes her back to do anything but go further and further as she basks in it. When she kisses Jason, those fireworks in her chest ignite again. Their kisses get deeper and deeper. Her hands don’t even fumble over the buttons.

She’s lighter than air as Jason lifts her up and places her on the dresser, everything in her mind zeroing in on this one moment in time. With every second, everything becomes realer. She’s truly  _ alive _ like she never has before, and it only intensifies as Jason tells her that she’s all he needs, calls the two of them perfect, says the two of them are right together.

Her  _ I love you _ slips right out of her mouth without her thinking, but she wouldn’t take it back for the world: she’s never felt anything so strongly that it hurts to keep under wraps. When Jason returns her sentiment as he finishes alongside her, Ivy realizes that she has never been so complete.

/ * \

After she parts from Jason—unwillingly, only because she knew the bus to her mother’s would be arriving soon—that night, her mind plays on repeat just one thought: Jason likes her. His words echo in her head endlessly:  _ I love you _ ;  _ you are all I need. _ She walks back to her room, legs all wobbly with joy and disbelief.

He feels the same. He feels the same. He feels the same. The future sprawls out in front of her, endlessly, and she knows it to be beautiful.

When she gets back to her room, Nadia is finishing up her last-minute packing. She doesn’t say a word to Ivy, barely even glances up at her. Ivy had, thankfully, packed the night before, and only has to collect her things before she leaves.

When she says goodbye to Nadia, Nadia doesn’t reply; Ivy is used to the sting, but it can't break through the sheer happiness she’s experiencing.

He feels the same, he feels the same, he feels the same.

It brings her to tears on the bus ride.

/ * \

Ivy, as she’s grown older, has come to appreciate her mother more as she begins to understand the burden that she carries. They’ve formed something of an understanding, a stronger bond, over the years, and Ivy truly feels loved by her. 

Still, this time around, Ivy’s mind is not on her mother. She sends Jason countless messages, both privately and to their group chats, but Jason never replies. Spring break crawls by. Silently.

She lives by her phone, jumping at every notification she receives, hoping and hoping it’s Jason. 

It never is. 

Still—she knows Jason likes her back. So there must be a perfectly valid explanation for this, one that would wash away all her doubts and fears in one fell swoop.

She doesn’t worry. Instead, as she sleeps her spring break away, she dreams of what the future will be like.

/ * \

When everyone returns to St. Cecilia’s, there is no big reunion, unlike in the past years. Everyone seems to go about their own business. Ivy doesn't even see Peter and Jason hug one another like they usually do after they haven’t seen one another in a while—no, Peter walks right by Jason as though they’re strangers. Jason watches him go by with something in his eyes that Ivy can’t place.

It’s as though she’s lost in a parallel dimension. She can’t shake the sense that something is wrong, terribly wrong.

Ivy barely pays attention during first period, too occupied with how she feels like a stranger in her own skin. As she’s walking through the halls to second period, though, she sees Jason. 

She’s walking over to him when she hears Matt’s voice behind her: “I left you a couple messages over break.”

A chill runs down Ivy’s spine. As she turns around, she sees the plain hurt on Matt’s face, and can’t do anything but fumble a half-baked apology out, one that he’s evidently not satisfied with. Ivy’s waiting for the prickly remark that she knows she deserves, but the bell rings just as Matt begins choosing his words. He walks away, and Ivy’s shoulders sag with relief.

Matt comes back quickly as Nadia carries in the class rankings, only to sulk away like a lost puppy when Nadia announces that Jason took valedictorian from him. Ivy moves to follow him before realizing she’s probably the last one that he wants to see. Nadia shoots a glare at her as she follows Matt instead only makes her feel guiltier.

Ivy bites her lip as sees Jason leaving, and in some sort of instinctive desire to not be alone, she calls after him. “Do you have a second?”

Jason turns around at her voice. “Yeah, what’s up?”

“Well,” Ivy starts, wringing her hands. She’s never been on this side of this conversation before, and nerves have settled in quickly. “It’s just that I haven’t seen you since… I guess I just thought that you would call me over the break. I mean, it’s fine that you didn’t, I just—” 

“No, you’re right,” Jason admits easily. “I should have called.” Ivy can’t help but notice that he doesn’t offer an excuse or an explanation, but then again, she’s used to boys being like this.

Still, as she looks at him, she sees the future, as light and boundless as sunbeams. She wants him to know just how much, how strongly, she feels, that everything she said wasn’t just in the heat of the moment. She wants him to know that she doesn’t at all want this to be like her usual flings.

“Things I have don’t last for long,” she starts, carefully. “Boys have come and boys have gone. I’ve grown accustomed…” 

As she continues, it becomes easier and easier. “But then came your kiss, and all I was missing was there in your eyes, your lonely blue eyes.” Taking Jason’s hands in hers, she marvels at how warm and soft and sweet they are in hers, how they slot together just right.

It gives her the courage to go on even further: “So please say you’ll stay; say you’ll never go away. My discarded heart has finally found a home.” She plays with Jason’s tie for a moment before placing her hand right over Jason’s heart, letting a smile overtake her face. It beats oh-so-quickly under her palm, mirroring hers. “I know it’s love. You touch my soul.”

She would stop there, but as she pauses, she finds that she wants, painfully, more than anything, to keep going. 

“Here in your hands, I find a chance to make it through,” she confesses as Jason begins to rub her shoulders soothingly, “to be somebody,” to be more than an act, more than the school slut, to be more, more, more than what everyone else wants her to be. “Stay with me.” Her voice hitches, almost cracks, and Ivy suddenly wishes be even closer to him, holding onto his arm, then turning to cup his face, then holding his hands—closer, even still, breathing the same breath as him. 

“Please let me touch your soul,” she pleads. “Please let me touch your soul.”

“I…” Jason breaks their hold.

“You…?” Ivy fills in. “Listen, I know it’s early with us. But I want you to know how I feel, because I have never felt this way before. Have you?”

“Yeah, once,” Jason replies, easily. “I think you’re such a special girl. I really mean that.” Ivy can barely feel her heart anymore with how it  _ soars _ . She grins down at her feet. “And I know, in a perfect world, that I would love you.”

Everything freezes. Everything but Jason.

“But what we have—it doesn’t work. It isn’t you—I swear, I promise. It’s not about you.”

Ivy doesn’t know how she manages to speak despite the fear that’s begun to choke her. “What do you mean?” 

“I made a mistake. I don’t think we should see each other,” Jason continues, making her throat squeeze even tighter.

“Wait, can we just back up? Maybe—” Ivy pleads, but Jason is already grabbing his bag, slinging it over his shoulder.

“Maybe someday,” Jason says, in the way of a concession. “I wish to G-d I felt that way. You have touched my soul—you’ll never know, but now I have to go.”

Ivy watches him take turn around and take one step, then another, ones that resound in her mind like bombs. There is no catching up to him, now or in any form.

As she watches him enter his classroom, Ivy can’t help but think how unfair it is that the marks people leave on another’s souls can differ so greatly.

/ * \

The days crawl by. Ivy sleeps them away in a vain attempt to distract herself from it all, both from Jason and that all of her friends seem to have disappeared—her phone just as silent as during spring break, the group chats just as dead, their lunch table abandoned—in barely a week’s time. Her mind keeps coming back to it, though, like a magnet, and her moods go down and up and down and up again like a roller coaster.

She thinks part of it is just that her period is coming, since her moods have always been chaotic during that time of the month. But it doesn’t come. And it doesn’t come. And it doesn’t come.

Her moods only get worse, and she only gets more and more tired, even though she’s sleeping half the day as it is.

The thought alone makes her nauseous, but it’s a possibility she’s always had to be aware of. She already has pregnancy tests on hand because of that, so she just has to dig one out, and—

It takes her an eternity to make herself look at the result. When she does, there are two bright, happy red lines etched on the test: positive.

She chokes on her breath.

She tries another test.

They appear again.

Positive. Positive, positive, positive, positivepositivepositive.

The lines sear themselves into her mind the same way a bell cuts through the dead of the night.

She hears herself crying, the muffled, choked sobs, before she registers the tears running down her cheeks, before she registers the tightness in her throat.

Ivy is not usually one to believe, but in that moment, she prays. For what, she doesn’t know.

/ * \

It is hard, almost impossible, for Ivy to work up the energy and the will to go to class. All she wants to do is lie in bed and sleep until everything is normal again. But most of all, she does not want to see Jason, see that look of disappointment on his face when she tells him—

But she can't do this alone. Ivy saw what it did to her mother, what it did to Ivy herself, and she knows that doing this alone is the worst possible decision she could make. Jason won’t respond to or even read any of the messages she sends to him or leaves him, no matter the platform, and as the days go by, it becomes increasingly clear to her that the only way to get Jason to acknowledge her is to force him to.

So she makes herself to go to the last little bit of rehearsals. When she walks in, Jason stutters on his lines, which would startle Ivy, but she first sees the way Peter has replaced her in the “Pilgrim’s Hands” scene. Something in her flares—maybe jealousy, sadness, or anger, maybe a mix of all of those things. Whatever it is, Ivy’s heart squeezes painfully at the sight. 

She pushes it to the edge of her mind as she corners Jason and everyone begins to leave. “I need to talk to you. Do you not get messages?” The frustration is evident in her voice; she’s too tired to monitor her tone.

“Do  _ you _ not get messages?” Jason counters. Ivy hates the way everything has changed, and, involuntarily, her fists clench. “Fine. What is it?”

A little bit of hope finds its way to her as she whispers, “Not here. Come back to my room.”

Jason’s excuses and attempts to distract her only sweep that hope away and intensify Ivy's irritation. 

She is glad when the conversation ends. Her mood is heading south quickly, and she just wants to be alone. Nadia blessedly isn’t there when she gets back to her room. Ivy lies in silence for a few minutes before it gets to be too much for her.

Ivy has a photo album that she keeps under her bed filled with mementos. She got it in seventh grade, a parting gift from her mother with the hopes that she would find enough to fill it up before either of them knew it. (It isn’t even a third full.)

She pages through it slowly, letting each picture and memento imprint in her memory once more. It’s absorbed her into a world of its own, small and frail, where not even a second passes. Ivy doesn’t even startle when Nadia comes into their room, slamming her bookbag down on a chair.

“Hey,” Ivy greets her, softly, still staring down at the photo album.

“I can’t believe you missed rehearsal again,” Nadia spits, ignoring her greeting entirely. “You know, it isn’t all about you. It affects the rest of us, what you do. Look, what is  _ wrong _ with you?”

“Nothing,” Ivy hedges, and hates the way her voice shakes.

“What, my brother break your heart? ‘Cause it sure broke mine when I found out he was seeing you. Poor Ivy,” she mocks, “stuck wanting the one thing she can’t have.”

“You think you know me,” Ivy looks up at Nadia, searching for any sort of compassion and finding nothing. She has to bite back her tears, throat swelling up all tight.

“Yeah? Well, you know what? I am so sick of you moping around when you have had the world handed to you just because you’re pretty,” Nadia almost yells at her, before turning around and sitting on the chair a few feet away from Ivy’s bed. “I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat,” she finishes, and she says it so softly, in such a fragile tone, that it wrenches Ivy’s stomach. Ivy expects her to continue, expects something that’ll feel like daggers piercing Ivy’s chest, but Nadia just sits and watches her with a careful eye before turning to her book, opening it and skimming through.

She can feel the wrongness in every bone of her body. She wants to go back more than anything else in the world.

“Remember back in seventh grade? Endless games of truth or dare, double dates to Shea’s arcade… When I close my eyes, I’m there.” Ivy continues flipping through the pages, before stopping on one, smile coming to her face against everything as she stares down at it. “I think my mother took this picture,” she says as she takes it out of its holder, “back when we were all just friends.” 

She holds it out to Nadia, and Nadia takes it, looking down at it with the same somber expression that Ivy had been looking at all the other pictures with. “Memories that fade and flicker burn again when I pretend.” 

Ivy’s heart is charring as she looks through the photo album, looks at what she had and lost, looks at what she held in her hands and didn’t appreciate enough. In this moment, this brief moment of understanding, like a truce, between the two of them, Ivy is closer to the past than she has ever been before, and just as ripping off a band-aid stings, it  _ burns _ .

She wants to stay in this moment, the closest thing she has to going back, for as long as she can. This moment is all she has anymore where she can bare everything and be heard, be understood. So she lets it all spill out, lets herself truly feel the anger and the sadness and the regret that she represses so staunchly, and Nadia  _ listens _ .

  
Ivy can’t help but keep going. 

She runs out of steam, eventually, as the tightness in her throat threatens to choke her, as the tears in her eyes blur her vision. She slowly makes her way back to her bed and curls up into a ball, tears streaming down her face, hiccuping like a child. She’s scared, scared, scared, so  _ scared _ .

Ivy doesn’t register Nadia’s arms around her at first. But as Nadia kneels beside her bed and hugs her, the warmth seeps through her cold, tired body, and she can’t help but cry harder.

Nadia holds Ivy through it, steady and sure as a rock. Nadia never says a word, but she even when she lets go, she keeps rubbing Ivy’s back soothingly. Her presence is the same as the sun’s as it caresses her shoulders on a summer day: gentle and sweet, persistently  _ there _ . 

Slowly but surely, Ivy’s tears turn to sniffles and hiccups, then into silence. 

Nadia has not left. As Ivy comes back to herself, the question forms quickly in her mind as she rests her chin on her knees, looking at Nadia: “Why are you being so kind to me?”

Nadia heaves a deep sigh as she weighs her words. “Because you and I aren’t so different after all, I guess. All these years, you know, I saw you as this—this—perfect little princess who hadn’t suffered a single thing and got the whole world without working for it. And eventually you started to symbolize everything I wanted to be but couldn’t become, and I started taking it out on you.” She swallows, averting her eyes from Ivy’s for a moment before flicking them back. “And I’m sorry. I know that means just about jack shit, but I’m sorry.”   
  
Ivy laughs weakly. She thinks she should be indignant, but the only thing she feels is an all-consuming relief, like an insurmountable burden has been lifted from her shoulders. “I’m sorry, too. I was the one who started this whole thing, remember? And I played along with all the stuff you said, you know, insulted you right back—I’m at fault, too.”

“So we’re both assholes,” Nadia concludes, and Ivy’s laugh is more genuine this time. 

“Yeah, I guess we are.” 

Nadia smiles at her wryly.

/ * \

Jason does not come by her room as he promised to. With each passing minute that he doesn’t come, Ivy becomes more and more antsy. Twenty minutes until the cast had agreed to rehearse one last time, and Jason still hasn’t come by her room, making it obvious he doesn’t plan to at all.

Ivy takes a breath, steels herself as she heads to the auditorium. Behind the door, she can hear Jason rehearsing what’s presumably his speech without a care on-stage, and it ignites an anger in her she didn’t know she possessed. 

Storming onto the stage, she doesn’t bother to mask the hurt and rage in her voice as she demands, “Where have you been? Is this some stupid game? I meant it when I said I need to talk to you.”

He turns to her, expression souring. “I understand, but, Ivy, nothing’s changed—”

“You have no idea what I’m going through!” she interrupts him, wringing her hands together, voice hitching. 

Jason spouts excuses, not even bothering, and Ivy has to hold herself back—from what, she’s not sure. Maybe crying, maybe shouting, maybe a combination of both. As he tries to walk past her out of the auditorium, she forcibly grabs his shoulder and turns him around, looking him dead in the eye, hoping it gets part of the message across. “That night—we weren’t safe. So tell me how we move on.”

Jason still doesn’t listen. Ivy wonders if this is who he’s been all along, if she just never noticed before now. “You know what I am saying—I would never make this up. You’re a winner; pat your perfect back! Way to go—you got me pregnant.” She takes a little bit of pleasure in the way Jason’s face shifts from nonchalance to fear. “Put that in your fucking speech! You wanted real—well, G-d, you’ll give them that!”

“ _ Shit _ ,” Jason whispers under his breath. “Why are you doing this to me?” 

Ivy recognizes the hitch in his voice, too, the way it cracks and trails off, and realizes that Jason is just as human, scared, and broken as she is: he’s just the same as her. The thought placates her, extinguishes the fire that had been rushing through her body.

“But we’re in this together,” she reminds him and herself over Jason’s mumbling. “We’ll take it one step at a time... Somehow, we’ll get through.” She bridges the half the gap between them, clutches her hands together tight. “And, Jason, I still love you. Someday, maybe—”

“You love me?”

(She does. She really, truly does. She knows it deep in her heart, the way it trembles as she looks at Jason, the way she wishes for nothing more than to get through this  _ with _ him. She can believe in him through even this.)

“Someday, maybe you can learn… Maybe you can…” Jason begins to take steps towards her. 

“Maybe I can…” 

“Maybe you can learn to love me, too,” she says alongside Jason as they join hands. She’s not sure who reached out first, and something about that fact gives her hope above all else. She closes her eyes, lets herself breathe for a second, and her pulse settles gently. “Maybe… please.”

“Maybe he would love you,” a voice resounds in the auditorium, and Ivy startles, breaking her hold with Jason. “Maybe if he weren’t that way,” Matt continues, and dread seeps through Ivy’s veins at Matt’s malicious tone. “He wouldn’t treat your feelings like his toy. Maybe he’d make you feel real special, like I always wanted to, but he’s already in love with a boy!”

The dread turns ice-cold. “What?” is all she can manage to choke out. 

“Am I late? What’s going on?” Peter calls as he enters. Ivy can see Matt gesture to him out of the corner of her eye. 

Something clicks in Ivy’s mind, then, before she has a minute to process any of it. “Jason, have you seen Ivy—I guess you have,” Nadia says as she walks in, taking in the scene. 

“You  _ knew _ ?” Jason asks disbelievingly, and that Nadia knowing was his first concern over Matt’s accusation only makes the gears in Ivy’s head turn more. Her mind whirs with all the things she should have noticed, all the things she  _ did _ notice and dismissed, and as she watches the scene unfold before her, she retreats further and further within herself. 

She’s numb as the rest of the students enter, as Matt asks if he should tell her what he saw at the rave, whatever that means. Peter shoves Jason away from Matt and tells him that he  _ knows, Jason _ ; the silence covers the room after Peter takes back his apology.

She knows the truth, but she doesn’t want to believe it. She doesn’t want to believe that her whole, perfect future never existed; she doesn’t want to believe that Jason would lie to her like that; she doesn’t want to believe any of it. “What’s going on, Peter? Jason, is he kidding?” The silence only stretches on; neither of them even look at her. “Jason?”

“Look, let’s just… run this scene,” Jason suggests, and Ivy doesn’t know why it’s that which breaks her, but it is. She starts crying, and crying, and crying, silently, with hot, bitter tears that run down her face as quickly as they can be replaced.

As she leaves, she doesn’t even look at Jason or Peter. It would hurt too much to. But she does slap Matt for all she’s worth, and hopes it hurts just as much as she does.

Her classmates come after her, grouping around her as she heads into her room and cries her heart out. They try, but they don’t help. She lets them fuss over her, until they slowly disperse and only Tanya is left. Ivy has settled down to just hiccups as Tanya rubs her back.

“I’m sorry,” Tanya says, for the hundredth time, and Ivy wishes it was enough.

/ * \

When Nadia comes back that night, the two of them don’t talk: there’s a wall up between the two of them, and neither of them seem to want to try to break through it. Ivy is waiting for the burst of anger, for her to take back everything she said the previous night, but Nadia never does. She just lies on her bed and reads with the most painfully somber expression Ivy has ever seen on anyone’s face. Ivy wonders if she’s even processing the words she’s reading.

Ivy wants to talk, but her throat won’t form the words. The only noise in the room is the gentle flipping of the pages of Nadia’s books and the way their breaths will hitch every so often, like they’re choking on the sorrow they’re experiencing.

Eventually, Ivy falls asleep, even though she doesn’t mean to. When she wakes up, Nadia isn’t there, but Ivy finds that her sheets are pulled over her and a blanket draped across her.

It is such a painstakingly small act of kindness, and yet, it makes Ivy cry.

/ * \

Ivy’s heart is like lead in her chest, weighing down her every moment. Still, something forces her show up for the first night of the school’s play: maybe a sense of obligation, or maybe it’s her wanting to pretend that everything is just fine, that she’s gotten over it like she would with any other boy.

Ivy is an actor, but those are things she can’t fake. Nadia and Peter have nothing to put into the final rehearsal, either, and that gives her some solace. Everyone else seems to be doing just fine. (It’s only been a day since Jason was outed. It kills Ivy to know that it barely matters to anyone else.)

Kyra and a few other cast members try to talk to her before the show, to keep her smiling. Skirting around the elephant in the room without any grace. A part of Ivy appreciates it with all she has, knowing that these people she barely was even friends with would care enough to try to lift her up, but another part of her hates it. They don’t know the real her. It’s done without any knowledge of what she would want.

As the conversation trails off awkwardly, she steps away, and Nadia follows after her, putting her hand on Ivy’s back to stop her. “You look great,” she tells Ivy, and maybe it’s for a lack of anything better to say, but knowing that Nadia—Nadia, who knows her, who truly understands what she’s going through, who has every reason to hate her even still—cares makes all the difference.

“Don’t feel great,” she murmurs back. The nausea is getting to her, anxiety making her head feel all fuzzy and hands all shaky, and her stomach won’t stop churning.

“I know.”

When they hug, a warmth that Ivy hasn’t felt in a long, long time creeps into her. It is not enough, but it is something.

When Rory calls for the actors to get ready, and Jason pulls Peter out of the line-up somewhere behind the curtains, something in her twists. She pushes it deep, deep down, and puts herself into her role once more.

/ * \

Throughout the play, Jason keeps missing cues and getting his lines wrong. At first, it’s small things, like a phrase wrong here or there or a line spoken too early or late, things that any unrehearsed actor would do. But as the play goes on, Jason begins speaking lines that pointedly aren’t even part of the script, ones that don’t make any sense in the context of the plot.

Ivy would worry if not for the fact that Jason was under so much stress.  _ He’s just nervous _ , she keeps telling herself, even though she doesn’t really believe it.

She’s not on-stage until halfway through the “Queen Mab” sequence, but she watches from the sidelines. The worry begins to truly fester within her as she watches Peter continually have to redirect Jason from trying to kiss him, Jason wandering around the stage as though he’s lost.  _ Maybe he just doesn’t care anymore _ , she tells herself. She wouldn’t, in his position.

When Peter tells Jason that he’s flying, she thinks, _ oh, that must be it _ . Jason being high is the only solution that both makes sense and calms her fears, and she did see Jason taking something from Lucas at the start of the final rehearsal. She pushes it aside in her mind as she tries to act out the dance with Jason—he keeps looking around at Peter like a lost puppy, and her chest squeezes so painfully. Hee misses cues left and right, sloppily, like he’s never rehearsed this dance with her in his life.

(He has. Ivy remembers the warmth in his hands each time they did. His hands now, though, are burning hot and clammy, like they’ve been in front of a fire. Ivy can barely stand to hold them.)

She tries to steady him. She is about to ask him if he’s okay when collapses backwards like a rag doll with no support.

For the rest of her life, in her nightmares, Ivy will replay the sound his body makes as it hits the floor.

/ * \

Ivy finds herself writing a letter to Jason by suggestion of the emergency grief counselor that the school brings in before graduation. The letter is selfish, and she knows it; but Ivy has always been selfish.

The last line of the letter is  _ I keep coming back to doubt.  _ After that, she finds she can’t write any more: everything she could say is contained in that one sentence.

/ * \

Grief is a funny thing: time doesn’t stop for it. Even when it seems like it should, as Nadia collects both hers and Jason’s diplomas, it keeps going without even a stutter. 

Ivy watches that empty chair for the entirety of the graduation processions. It stays empty; Ivy isn’t sure what she expected.

/ * \

As they’re finishing up their packing before they leave St. Cecilia’s for the final time, Nadia says this to Ivy: “It’s not your fault.”

It’s the first time the two of them have breached the subject while they were alone. Ivy’s breath shudders as she exhales, gripping the edge of her suitcase hard enough that she can feel it imprint on the palm of her hand. 

“I mean it,” Nadia continues. “You know I’d be giving you hell if I thought it was your fault. But, you know, sometimes—” Her breath is shaky, too, Ivy can’t help but note. “Sometimes bad things happen and you can’t blame anyone. Sometimes you just have to accept that it happened and try to face forward.”

Ivy nods, silently, and wipes at her tears.

/ * \

As it is, Nadia’s parents are the type to believe that a child loses privileges to house and home as soon as they turn eighteen. Nadia would have moved out immediately after her parents failed to attend Jason’s funeral, anyway. Without much issue, she has an apartment lined up for the summer before college after she moves out of St. Cecilia’s. Nadia doesn’t need—or want—to be in the town with the cheapest rent rate as Ivy does, but she wants to be close to Ivy, so she ends up in an apartment just a few towns over.

Nadia is the one who helps Ivy to and from appointments to the doctor and family planning clinic. Nadia is the one who keeps Ivy company through the guilt and sickness-ridden days where Ivy thinks she doesn’t even deserve to be alive.

But Ivy and Peter have grown closer, too. Ivy was sure Peter would hate her for what she had a hand in, but Peter echoes the same thing that Nadia said: that it’s not her fault, not her fault, not her fault. Ivy has yet to accept it. She feels like her love for Jason is far outshined by Nadia and Peter’s love for him. But Peter says that there’s something special in that they all loved Jason so dearly, an inseverable connection in that. They are carrying a similar burden. 

Peter tells her this one night, when the moon is dead center overhead, and Ivy’s eyes are so heavy that she can’t keep them open: “Remembering hurts, but trying to forget is the most painful thing I’ve ever felt.”

The way his voice twists around his words eats away at Ivy whenever she thinks back on that conversation. Or to when he said that Jason would be alive if they’d never met, or that he has nightmares sometimes where Jason blames him for everything.

It’s another late-night conversation with Peter when she finally confesses, “I don’t want to keep the baby. I don’t think I could ever love it properly or give it the life it deserves. But I don’t—I don’t want to kill the last living part of him. I don’t think I could ever forgive myself for that.”

Peter is silent for so long that frigid fear begins to crawl through Ivy’s veins. “Jason lived doing what everyone else wanted of him,” he says, finally, tentatively. “That’s what—led to everything.” (The two of them stutter when breaching the topic. They always do.) “I don’t think… he would want you going down the same path. He would want you to be happy.” 

  
  


His words settle in the silence as Ivy thinks them over. The moonlight spills in through her window; she watches the way everything is so still and silent and soft so late at night. “Thank you.” 

/ * \

Nadia is the one who takes Ivy to the family family clinic for her abortion.

(“I can’t believe you would think I’d want you to make a decision based off what Jason or I would feel over what you feel,” Nadia tells her when Ivy announces her decision to Nadia, full of awkward apologies and contingencies.)

Nadia is also the one who brings Ivy home after it. Ivy is in tears the whole way home, consumed with guilt that seems as though it’ll eat her alive.

Nadia stays with her through it. It means the world and all the more to Ivy.

/ * \

The night of her abortion, Ivy does not sleep. Instead, she thinks. Peter’s words keep coming back to her:  _ Jason lived doing what everyone else wanted of him.  _   
  
She and Jason are the same at their core. Both of them put up an act for everyone else and never let anyone in, but the difference between Ivy and Jason was that the people who did see under Jason’s act loved him for who he was more than anything else in the world. That’s the very thing Ivy’s wanted more than life itself: for someone to truly, genuinely love her.

Yet Jason wasn’t happy. He wasn’t happy at all. Ivy thinks of the way Jason’s voice dripped with sadness when he asked  _ you love me? _ and wonders if, maybe, love is not the miracle solution she’s always thought it to be.

The thought wedges itself into her mind like a doorstop. It settles, slowly, and she becomes convinced of its truth as time wears on: if Jason held just that in his hands and didn’t even want to live, then it certainly won't be enough to fix her on its own.

/ * \

Late at night after her mother’s gotten home from a double shift, her mother tells her, “I used to think the same thing, you know. It’s why I stayed so long with your father—because I thought I could never throw out someone’s love, even if it hurt me from time to time.” 

She closes her eyes for a moment, sighing deeply. “But at some point, there will be that critical moment in life where you have to make a decision on who you’re living for, if it’s for yourself or for someone else, and someone else’s happiness should not come at the cost of your own. It took me a long, long time to realize that, and I don’t want you making the same mistake, honey.”

Ivy thinks that she doesn’t want that for herself, either. It almost comes as a surprise.

/ * \

Slowly but surely, Ivy begins to change: it is both for herself and for Jason.

It does not come easy; there are days when Ivy retreats back into her shell and puts up the front she knows everyone will like, but there are also days when she emerges, holding her head high, because someone who is friends with everyone is truly friends with nobody. And she has people who see her for who she truly is and  _ like _ her, flaws and all—and that is enough.

Ivy starts living for herself.

/ * \

Ivy is lying awake one night, thinking about Peter’s words again. They keep her up more often than she would like to admit.

Past her act, sometimes, she looks around and realizes she has no urge to flirt with any of the guys around her. No urge to even talk to them. There are the intrusive thoughts, certainly, the things festering so deep within her that she isn’t sure she’ll ever be rid of them, but she hasn’t once looked at a boy and thought anything romantic of him.

At first, she thinks it’s because she’s still in love with Jason. And she certainly is—she still loves Jason with every bit of her being, and it filters through the often-explored memories she has of him. But she trips over the word  _ in _ . 

She loves him, loves him, loves him, but she wonders, as she stares at the ceiling and watches the light splay over it, if it was as genuine as she thought it was. If she was in love with Jason so much as she loved the idea of someone loving her, if she was in love with Jason so much as she loved the idea of being in a relationship with someone like him.

She wants to say so. She doesn’t want to betray his memory, betray her love for him, something that had impacted him so significantly.

But Ivy cannot honestly admit to herself that, yes, she is truly, wholly  _ in  _ love with Jason. 

The guilt floods in like a dam has been opened up on her. She does not sleep that night.

/ * \

Ivy does not want to think about it, but it forces itself into her thoughts despite her every effort to distract herself. Nadia ends up being the first one she confesses it to; it’s not entirely voluntarily that she does, but it sticks in her throat like a frog, waiting to escape, and after a while, she just can’t help it.

“I’m not surprised,” Nadia says after a moment.

“ _ What _ ?”

“Well, it’s not like you ever seemed super  _ into _ any of the guys you slept with, or anything, right? You never really formed a proper attachment to them.” She pauses, waiting for Ivy’s confirmation, which she gives. “Yeah, so, like—when Jason actually treated you decently, of course you were gonna get attached to him. You didn’t get jack shit from any of the other guys you were with, and Matt might’ve tried, but he never really bothered to understand you. I think Jason probably saw himself in you a little, so you two probably really forged a bond, right? And that’s just how it went.”

“You’re not… mad?” Ivy asks, all tiny and scared.

“What, you’re not telling me you hated him, are you? You still care for him.” Ivy nods, quickly and sure. “So of course I don’t mind. Your relationship was all kinds of messed up, anyway, so I’m surprised you aren’t more angry at him.”   
  


“I mean—” Ivy pauses, testing out the words on her tongue. “I mean, I wish he would’ve talked to me. Before using me like that and then internalizing everything. But I can’t possibly understand the situation he was in and how I added to that. We were both at fault, kind of. So, well—I’m upset, but I’m not  _ mad _ at him. It’s more aimless than that.”

“So there we have it,” Nadia says, spreading her arms in a kind of  _ voila  _ motion. 

(It is so easy, so natural, to talk about even such sensitive things with Nadia; the two of them have formed a bond of trust as strong as steel, invaluable to Ivy. She returns Nadia’s smile without thinking, and her chest burns with affection she can’t properly express.)

/ * \

They go off to college soon enough. Ivy chooses a college in Massachusetts in order to stay close to her mother, not that either of them would have been able to afford transportation costs if she went anywhere else; Nadia goes to Saint Mary’s in Indiana, just a five minute drive from Notre Dame, not that any of them bring it up; and Peter ends up at Berkeley. 

The distance comes hard for Ivy. They still text and call all the time, but it’s just not the same. It’s as though she’s left a piece of herself behind somewhere she can never retrieve it again.

There are days when she’s tempted, when she can tell that she’s slipping, but she invariably catches herself, be it with the thought of Nadia, Peter, her mother, or Jason. That’s not to say that there are no insincere kisses or flirting; sometimes, the habit resurfaces without Ivy even realizing. But she never goes as far as she used to, and she takes pride in that.

(The loneliness comes and goes, now, instead of taking permanent residence. That makes all the difference.)

/ * \

The first time Ivy sees Nadia after starting college, during their first week-long break, she runs into Nadia’s arms to hug her. As she rests her head on Nadia’s shoulder, Nadia rubbing her back so sweetly, Ivy thinks she feels their hearts beat in time. 

Over breaks, Nadia starts to stay at Ivy’s house instead of trying to bother with finding an apartment to rent for just a week. Nadia has to sleep on the couch, but she swears up and down that she doesn’t mind it, and pitches in around the house with chores and meals.

Nadia slots into Ivy's domestic life like the final piece of a puzzle. When she goes back to college, she begins to miss the way Nadia’s voice would curl around a yawn, the way her hair would frizz up overnight, the way the two of them would playfully fight as they cooked in their— _ the _ —meager kitchen.

Sometimes Ivy misses Nadia so much that it aches, even though they talk every day. 

The distance may come hard, and it might not get much easier, but she does get acclimated to it; and knowing Nadia will be there to come home to makes it all the better.

/ * \

Sometimes, Peter likes to just talk about Jason to Ivy. They’re assorted memories with no rhyme or reason to them: some of them are painful ones, like the way Jason shoved him down when they broke up, but some of them are kind ones, like the way Jason held him at the rave after they fought. Ivy listens, always, and treasures them just the same way Peter does. She feels special, knowing Peter trusts her with what he has left of Jason.

Peter is telling her the story of when he and Jason first met. It’s one he’s told before, way back at the beginning of summer, but Ivy lets him tell it anyway. “And, you know, the two of us made eye contact, and I just couldn’t look away. Something made me just want to keep looking at him forever.”

“So you knew from the start, huh?” Ivy asks, smile in her tone.

“I think a part of me did.” He sounds far away, lost in his thoughts. “Even if it took me forever to accept that. But it’s hard to keep denying it when your heart flutters every time you see him bleary-eyed in the morning, and, for a second, all you can imagine is waking up next to that years in the future, and—yeah.” 

He lets out a breath, the shakiness evident. Ivy’s chest squeezes painfully at the ache in his voice. “Jason used to tell me—he used to tell me that what tipped him off that he liked me was that he started not being able to imagine the future without me. And, I mean, you could read that as platonic, I guess. But he said that when he came back from summer break and saw me again, it was like… the world stopped for a second. The same way it did for me when we first met.”

Something shifts in Ivy, then, a rusted gear starting to turn despite its bindings. It is not quite a realization, not exactly, but more a seed planted that yearns with its whole being to grow.

/ * \

Soon enough, the seed flourishes. It takes weeks upon weeks to peek its head above the soil, takes careful, tender nourishing by the way of constant conversation with Nadia and the way Ivy’s college friends always give her sideways glances whenever she brings up Nadia  _ again _ .

What triggers it is the stray comment from Nadia one evening that she’s glad she has Ivy in her life. Ivy is typing back, about to return the sentiment, and she’s about to hit send on  _ yeah, I can’t imagine not having you in my life _ when she pauses.

Her conversation with Peter just a month ago flashes in her mind. A pang of fear twinges through her as she stares down at what she’s just typed without even thinking. 

She doesn’t mean it like that, she tells herself. Even Peter said that it doesn’t mean anything romantic, necessarily. But then she thinks back to the way warmth would curl through her whole body whenever she saw Nadia all disheveled from sleep early in the morning, back to how Peter said  _ but it’s hard to deny it _ , and her palms start becoming clammy.

No, she doesn’t like Nadia like that. She’s never looked at a girl like that in her life; she’s only ever wanted to be with boys, after all. That’s what’s normal, expected of her.

The text cursor blinks at her as though in opposition.

When was the last time she looked a boy since St. Cecilia’s and thought she wanted to do anything with him? Of the countless, countless boys in her school, has there been even one she’s felt her heart skip a beat looking at? 

She knows the answer to that before she even asks it. 

The cursor keeps blinking.

She deletes her reply, throws her phone onto her desk, and buries her face in the pillow.

  
There’s no way. They’re just best friends, and Nadia would never feel the same, anyway. It’s stupid to even consider, she tells herself.

She ignores the buzzing of her phone; the sleep she falls into is restless.

When she wakes up the next morning, there are texts from Nadia asking if everything’s alright. She replies with  _ yeah, sorry, just fell asleep. I’m glad we worked everything out, too! You’re so important to me. _

(Ivy is scared the ingenuity will bleed through her words, somehow.)

/ * \

As the days wear on, the thoughts bouncing inside her head incessantly, Ivy has to admit it to herself: maybe she does like Nadia a bit too much.

It’s easy to admit to herself that she loves Nadia platonically, but when she tries to put her love in a romantic context, the bile crawls up her throat without hesitation. She wants to know what love is like, and maybe she already does with the way the very thought of Nadia makes her soul flicker and swirl so pleasantly and soothingly within her, but—

Every time, her own voice echoes in her head:  _ And I miss you before you’ve left—you are tomorrow! _

The last time she said she loved someone, the last time she made this mistake, the last time she acted on what she felt—

Ivy knows, rationally, that she is not what caused Jason’s suicide. Falling in love will not cause something like that to happen again: it was a cluster of unfortunate events that happened too soon, too close to one another. It’s  _ okay _ to fall in love again, but—the blood drains from her face every time she thinks the word in relation to Nadia.

She doesn’t want to hurt someone like that again, ever. She doesn’t want to have to crawl out from under that guilt again. She doesn’t think she could.

She was so sure she was in love with Jason, after all, and then, suddenly, she wasn’t. What if it happens again? What if she hurts Nadia just as badly as she hurt Jason? What if, what if, what if—

It’s an endless mantra in her mind that makes her palms clam up and her whole body shudder with pure, instinctive dread.

So Ivy tells herself this: she is not in love with Nadia. She just might have a crush on her. And that’s all it will ever be. 

/ * \

Ivy manages to repress it all well enough. She’s rusty, but she can still act as well as anyone. 

It’s when Nadia texts her with  _ are we still good with me staying over next break? _ that dread overtakes Ivy again. There’s a difference between acting over text and acting in-person. Ivy will have to see all those little things that make her pulse beat all quick and sweet and have to hide it in real-time.

Still, Ivy sends her back a quick  _ of course! :-) _ , because the worst thing would be not seeing Nadia after so many months. 

She will just have to figure it out as she goes.

/ * \

Ivy hugs Nadia the tightest she ever has, not even letting her get past the doorway, smiling so wide into Nadia’s shoulder that Nadia can probably feel it. 

“I missed you, too,” Nadia chuckles. 

Her laugh cuts through the air like bells, and Ivy only smiles even more.

/ * \

The domesticity makes Ivy’s pulse pick up every time she thinks about it. With the realization of that she  _ likes _ Nadia, everything takes on a different shade in Ivy’s eyes. Every time Nadia smiles at Ivy, pretty and sweet, and every time the two of them stay up to absurd hours just talking, or trash the kitchen trying to cook—Ivy’s chest swells a little bit more. (Nadia smiling is the worst, because Ivy always gets caught on how soft her lips look, the way they might feel if they kissed, and…) 

Ivy knows it will come to head eventually, even if she tries not to think about it. Ultimately, she attributes it to one of their late-night talking sessions, the two of them curled up in blankets with hot chocolate as they watch the moon cascade across the sky through the window. Ivy is increasingly losing her filter as she gets more and more tired.

Nadia yawns (cute, cute, cute), scoots a little closer to Ivy, and rests her head on Ivy’s shoulder. Ivy almost startles, but catches herself just in time. She holds her hot chocolate tighter, the warmth bleeding through the mug, and her sleep-deprived mind wonders how warm Nadia’s hand would be if she held it right now.

“Do you ever think about where we would be right now if things were different?” Nadia asks, softly. “You know—if we never got close, if Jason were still here.”

“All the time,” Ivy answers in a similar hush. “But I’m happy with where we are. There’s a lot I regret, but there’s so much I wouldn’t give up, either.”

“Yeah,” Nadia agrees, and the conversation turns to comfortable silence. Ivy is focused on the way Nadia’s hair tickles at the nape of her neck so nicely. “I don’t know what I would have done without you,” Nadia adds, eventually. “You were my rock through it all, you know. Uprooting myself and having nowhere to really go—having you meant so much to me.”   
  


Ivy blinks. “I always thought the same about you,” she says, carefully, not wanting to reveal too much, especially not in a conversation like this.

“Yeah, I know,” Nadia laughs softly. “But I don’t think I’ve ever expressed what you were to me, then. I just wanted you to know.”

Ivy’s chest burns with all she wants to say but can’t.

/ * \

Nadia takes Ivy out to a small, local café for breakfast the next day. It’s the first snowfall of the season, and they’re all bundled up in their winter coats and gloves as they walk downtown. Ivy watches the snow dust the roads and walkways and thinks of where she was just two Christmases ago, still at St. Cecilia’s, dying of loneliness.

The café is all warm and cozy; Ivy and Nadia get a small table in the corner, and Ivy smiles to herself as she watches Nadia try to down the black coffee she swears she likes, even though anyone who watches her try to drink it can tell it’s too bitter for her.

The morning goes quickly. When the two of them get back home, kicking the snow off their boots and hanging up their coats, Nadia pauses in the doorway as Ivy puts her purse on the kitchen counter. Ivy turns to Nadia, and Nadia is wringing her hands as she looks down at her socked feet, snow dusting the doormat beneath them. “What’s up?” Ivy asks her, concerned. “Did you forget something at the café?”

Nadia opens her mouth, closes it again, and bites her lip. She closes her eyes tight for a second, and an anxious chill runs through Ivy. Nadia sighs, opening her eyes again. “Look,” she starts, and hesitates only a second before continuing. “I feel like I’m lying to you every second I don’t tell you anything. So I’m just gonna—I’m just gonna tell you, I guess. I’m sorry.”

“Is everything okay?” Ivy purses her lips. The breaths she takes feel too shallow to be any good. 

“So, I—last night, there was so much I wanted to say. It hurt to not say it. I like you so much, Ivy.” Her lips curl into a grin despite herself; Ivy’s pulse is racing a mile a minute. “I like you more than I should. And, well, it’s okay if you don’t feel the same. I can handle it. I just—wanted to let you know.” She takes a deep breath. “Yeah. That’s it. I can—”

“You  _ like _ me?”

“A lot,” Nadia says, softly, like it’s a secret. “I understand if you’re uncomfortable. I can always, y’know, find someplace else…”

Nadia’s voice fades into the background as Ivy’s mind freezes, then works in double-time, heart stuttering. “But—why would you…” Ivy asks, helplessly.

“Because you’re so strong,” Nadia answers immediately. “Because you’re not afraid to change. Because you’ve grown so much. Because you’re an inspiration to me. Because you’re so sweet and funny. Because—”

“Stop, stop, stop,” Ivy flusters. “You can’t possibly—”

“I  _ can _ ,” Nadia insists. “I do.”

Ivy takes in a shuddering breath. She’s achingly vulnerable without her act, and so, so scared of what the future will bring. “I—”

“You don’t have to say anything if you’re uncomfortable,” Nadia interrupts her. “I get it. I just—wanted to get that off my chest.”

“That’s not it,” Ivy says in a sudden fit of confidence. “I—I like you, too,” she says. “I think. I just—I don’t know. It scares me. It scares me, so, so much. I don’t want to lose you again, and I don’t want—to ruin everything like I did last time, and—”

“Ivy,” Nadia says, so many different layers of emotion to her voice. Ivy falls silent. “What happened wasn’t your fault. I’ve told you that time and time again.” Ivy swallows her interjection. “It was just—a combination of circumstances. Okay?”   
  


Ivy nods, wanting to believe it so badly.   
  
“Okay. And you’re not gonna lose me if this all goes south, or whatever. You mean more to me than that. Haven’t I shown you that?”

Ivy nods again, thinking of the way Nadia gave her the tools to climb from rock bottom.

“So you don’t have to worry. It’ll be okay, I promise.” Nadia is sweet and soothing and so easy to trust. Something settles in Ivy as Nadia’s voice curls around her heart.

Nadia bridges the gap between them, holds out her hand for Ivy to take.

Ivy does.

/ * \

It takes a few days for Ivy to become totally comfortable with the idea, to look at Nadia and think that everything might be alright if the two of them were together. Nadia is patient with her, endlessly so.

Ivy takes Nadia’s hand while they’re out on a walk one day, forcing herself to not think about it as she does. The anxiety swells up quickly, but Nadia squeezes her hand and smiles at her, and it ebbs just enough for Ivy to smile back at her.

Nadia’s hand is as soft and warm as Ivy’s always imagined it to be; she likes the feeling of it in hers, the gentle weight, the natural way Nadia swings their hands back and forth. 

Ivy kisses Nadia goodnight that evening, just a quick peck on the cheek. She doesn’t feel the spark. But as Nadia smiles at her, what she does feel is a warmth dance within her like embers dance around a fire.

**Author's Note:**

> i cannot thank my sweetheart, [robin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luciferTM/pseuds/luciferTM), enough for betaing this... i appreciate it so so much and they worked so hard on this for me and really made it shine ;v; i love you!!
> 
> please, please, please do feel free to leave a comment about what you thought. i poured my heart and soul into this fic and i would love to hear any feedback you have, criticism or otherwise. thank you so much in advance!
> 
> my twitter is [@queeenmab](https://twitter.com/queeenmab) if you'd like to contact me for anything at all, be it chatting or whatever! i'd love to meet more people into bare ;v;


End file.
